The advisors of the 17th edition submit their report

Throughout the year, they were invited to question whata public service broadcaster should bring today and tomorrownot only in its programs, but in its way of inhabiting everyday life in a profoundly recomposed media landscape.

This Friday, June 12, the advisors went to the France Télévisions headquarters to submit their conclusions to the management and teams of the public group.

 

 

This year of exchanges reveals a public service whose legitimacy is firmly recognized, but whose implementation is questioned with increasing demands.

 

 

A legitimate public service, whose promise must be fulfilled with greater force

 

The members of the Council do not call into question the principle of a public audiovisual service. They recognize a unique place in the media landscape, based on distinctive values: reliability, accessibility, pluralism, concern for the general interest. 

France Télévisions is not perceived as a broadcaster among others, but as an actor invested with a particular responsibility, that of guarantee common access to information, knowledge, culturewhere market logic alone would not suffice.

This strong legitimacy has the counterpart of high demands. The public is less forgiving of its ambiguities in public service than in other actors. What emerges from the debates is less a lack of supply than a lack of benchmarks: content deemed useful and qualitative, but discovered late or by chance, an editorial identity that is sometimes difficult to grasp.

“I find you extraordinary, but I find that the values ​​that you support and that you carry are very little visible. HAS”

 

 

Inform: a solid foundation, precise renewal expectations

 

Information is the territory in which France Télévisions benefits from the most solid base of legitimacy. In a saturated and often anxiety-provoking media environment, public service is perceived as a benchmark for verification, prioritization and perspective.
 

This trust is accompanied by clear requirements. The members of the Council are not asking for more neutral information, a term they consider vague or misleading, but more impartial, more transparent about its method. 

They want to understand how subjects are chosen, how sources are cross-referenced, how the editorial is constructed. Trust cannot remain a symbolic heritage: it must, according to the Council, be actively maintained.
 

Faced with increasingly hybrid and fragmented information practices, the Council expresses strong expectations: that France Télévisions becomes a true “media guide”, capable of offering several levels of reading of the same subject according to the needs of the moment.
 

“If I want to get information in 30 seconds, I must have a public service format that informs me in 30 seconds. HAS”

 

Entertain: a fully legitimate mission, an expected offer on a more daring register

 

Entertainment is not perceived by the members of the Council as a secondary register or a concession to the logic of the audience. On the contrary, it is one of the means by which a public media can bring people together, create links, offer shared experiences between different audiences.

France Télévisions is recognized for its successes in fiction. Series like Sambre or The Laura Stern Affair are cited as demonstrations of what committed public service fiction can produce. The Council expresses a recurring reservation about the overall balance of the offer: perceived as too dominated by thrillers and dark stories, it is insufficiently identified with more unifying and more intergenerational programs.

Members also want more playful entertainment formats, less restrained in their relationship to television pleasure.
 

“We would like you to let loose a littleâ€

 

Duquercultivate oneself: the preferred territory of public service

 

Culture and knowledge constitute the territory with the strongest symbolic legitimacy for France Télévisions. Okoo et Be happy are hailed as particularly convincing examples of a concrete and differentiating public service.

Major documentaries, recordings of live shows and cultural magazines are recognized as a real service of cultural democratization.

The Council nevertheless points out a gap between this recognized vocation and its effective presence in uses. The cultural offer exists, it is appreciated. It is still struggling to become a reflex, to address audiences that are not already available to it. What the Council is calling for is more contemporary forms of access, more attractive formats, more fluid bridges between academic culture and pop culture.
 

 

Conclusion: assume oneself as a singular actor, update oneself to remain useful

 

At the end of this year of discussions, the CCP sets out a clear expectation: France Télévisions must assume its role as a singular actor, not by retreating into an institutional posture, but by making its difference visible, active and desirable.. It must also update itself, not to resemble the platforms, but to demonstrate that it understands the new logic of attention without renouncing what constitutes its own value.

 

“If people do not see the public service as being useful and interesting to them, then the public service completely loses any justification for its existence. HAS”

 

A strong public audiovisual service is not only a defended public service. It is a public service which gives reasons to be chosen.